CcHUB announces winners of the first tech Diaspora Challenge

Co-creation Hub (CcHUB), Nigeria’s leading social innovation centre today names the winners of the Diaspora Challenge.

The ambitious initiative which received over 250 entries from scientists, innovators and entrepreneurs across the diaspora community in the UK was on a mission to seek and harness workable tech solutions to developmental challenges plaguing Nigeria.

“It was an intensely difficult challenge to moderate as there were many frontline and innovative ideas,” said Femi Longe, CcHUB Director, Innovation/Consulting. “The three winning startups showed a credible benefit to daily challenges within the Nigerian sectors and also have the potential to deliver economic remittance. We look forward to working with these entrepreneurs to help them build sustainable and scalable businesses.”

The CcHUB Diaspora Challenge, launched in May 2017, solicited innovative workable ideas with a focus to address challenges in the energy, finance and education sectors. The objective was to tap the diverse wealth of resources that Nigerians living abroad could contribute to national development.

We are proud to announce the top three startups carefully selected as winners for the CcHUB Diaspora Challenge. These startups represent a new class of entrepreneurs coming up across Nigeria, and across Africa. Companies specializing in technology-based digital products and solutions encompassing industry sectors with potential to scale nationally:

Big Pot (Energy Stream), founded by Oluyemi Jegede is a startup in the energy sector stream. Big Pot is a power utility startup that provides solar energy to small and medium sized residences and businesses through smart community microgrids distributed via a blockchain network formed by geographically dispersed solar photovoltaic panel installations and lithium ion battery storage.

1 Million Teachers (Education Stream) is an education based startup on a mission to fix education in Africa by empowering teachers with skills and knowledge using gamified and incentives based learning. This startup founded by Hakeem Subair aims to develop a subscription-based online learning platform for teachers.

TruuScore (FinTech Stream), a FinTech startup founded by Dr. Freda Owusu, is a credit reference service which uses a person-centered algorithm to enable credit scoring for the financially excluded populace. TruuScore is developing a person-centred system that enables credit scoring, using multiple data sources.

‘Bosun Tijani, CEO and Co-founder, CcHUB says, ‘Nigeria is experiencing an unprecedented growth and with this comes developmental gaps and issues. We believe that the restructuring of Nigeria is one that requires collective efforts needing all hands on deck. The Diaspora Challenge is one of the vehicles through which we want to drive innovation for a better society by tapping into the innovative wealth of Nigerians in the diaspora eager to proffer solutions’

Each of the three winning startups will receive a $15,000 investment, and will be enrolled into a 9 month long CcHUB Acceleration Programme, custom fit with business advisory support, access to a wide network of mentors with domain knowledge expertise in a bid to build and scale.

CcHUB is a social innovation centre dedicated to accelerating the application of social capital and technology for economic prosperity. The technology hub is the first in Nigeria to serve as an Open Living Lab in which user-driven innovation is fully integrated in the co-creative process of new services, products and societal infrastructures.

CcHUB’s methodology is hinged on engaging a community of progressive stakeholders (end-users, subject matter experts, government agencies, businesses, academics, civil societies etc.) who bring their creativity and knowledge to play in co-creating solutions to social challenges faced by the average Nigerian through our open living labs. The resulting innovations are then supported to become sustainable market solutions by providing proactive business support, advice, mentorship and funding through our pre-incubation & research unit.

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